nye4

Nye 4

civil war as an example of historic memory (how different people use history)

civil war or war between the states or war of northern aggression
people use history to make modern day political or social points
Nye is writing a history of how people use history as a symbol (to express how they see the world)

counter-narratives

some saw cutting forests as destruction rather than the coming of civilization
in the south log cabins were associated with slaves and extreme poverty

when and why did the counternarrative about preserving forests start?

The conservation movement starting in the mid 19th century set out to preserve forests
Thoreau saw nature as having something to give us, and near the cities people no longer had as much opportunity to experience nature
whn you live where undeveloped land is getting scarce, you start to feel you are losing something
after 1850, with the help of the railroad, the pattern spread of cutting down trees for lumber then selling the land to farmers--industrial scale forestry
people started to ask what will happen when the forests are gone?
the eventual answer was the National Forests: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m-oFZMhJqc
how did this shift of views happen?

Background: George Perkins Marsh focused on reasons to preserve forests: he is arguing from scientific ideas of the time about climate and weather

we need forests prevent flooding
prevent drought, both by holding moisture like a sponge and recharging the water table
also it was believed that trees cause rain (rain follows the plow)--if people started farms in the dry great plains it would start raining more, if they planted trees
he argued that cutting down forests would lead to deserts

Marsh's Address delivered before the Agricultural society of Rutland County, Sept. 30, 1847
he starts with the idea that agriculture is a "means and instrument of civilization and social progress" and asks how it can be improved

he starts with how dramatically civilization has transformed America
he talks about how agriculture has begun to be scientific (this goes back to 1700s and Jethro Tull, but by the 1830s science has more useful to say about agriculture)
this is easier to see for soils, less so for climate, but he argues it is also true of climate
"The draining of swamps and the clearing of forests perceptibly effect the evaporation from the earth, and of course the mean quantity of moisture suspended in the air." (p. 11)
"There are certain other improvements connected with agriculture, to which I desire to draw your special attention. One of these is the introduction of a better economy in the management of our forest lands.... The functions of the forest, besides supplying timber and fuel, are very various. The conducting powers of trees render them highly useful in restoring the disturbed equilibrium of the electric fluid; they are of great value in sheltering and protecting more tender vegetables against the destructive effects of bleak or parching winds, and the annual deposit of the foliage of deciduous trees, and the decomposition of their decaying trunks, form an accumulation of vegetable mould, which gives the greatest fertility to the often originally barren soils on which they grow, and enriches lower grounds by the wash from rains and the melting snows.... Forests serve as reservoirs and equalizers of humidity. In wet seasons, the decayed leaves and spongy soil of woodlands retain a large proportion of the falling rains, and give back the moisture in time of drought, by evaporation or through the medium of springs. They thus both check the sudden flow of water from the surface into the streams and low grounds, and prevent the droughts of summer from parching our pastures and drying up the rivulets which water them. " (p. 18-19)
"It has long been a practice in many parts of Europe, as well as in our older settlements, to cut the forests reserved for timber and fuel at stated intervals. It is quite time that this practice should be introduced among us. " (p. 20)
concludes with a call for farmers to study science and technology
1864 book: Man and Nature was a history of human destruction of nature, starting with the ancient world
called for humans to work with nature to repair the damage

Background: The fight to preserve the Adirondacks also initially avoided wilderness claims

by the 1870s a million trees a year were being cut in New York state
Erie Canal opened 1825 then develops a good railroad network leading to more cutting of forests
these are the forests painted by artists of the Hudson River School
Park commissioners wrote "We do not favor the creation of an expensive and exclusive park for mere purposes of recreation, but condemning such suggestions, recommend the simple preservation of the timber as a measure of political economy."
instead they wrote:

"The Adirondack Wilderness contains the springs which are the sources of our principal rivers, and the feeders of the canals. Each summer the water supply for these rivers and canals is lessened, and commerce has suffered...

The immediate cause has been the chopping and burning off of vast tracts of forest in the wilderness, which have hitherto sheltered from the sun's heat and evaporation the deep and lingering snows, [and] the brooks and rivulets ...

Now the winter snows that accumulate on the mountains, unprotected from the sun, melt suddenly and rush down laden with disaster...

The remedy for this is the creation of an Adirondack Park or timber preserve, under charge of a forest warden and deputies. The "burning off" of mountains should be visited with suitable penalties; the cutting of pines under ten inches or one foot in diameter should be prohibited. The officers of the law might be supported per capita tax, upon sportsmen, artists, and tourists visiting the region; a tax which they would willingly pay if the game should be protected from unlawful slaughter, and the grand primeval forest be saved from ruthless desolation.

The interests of commerce and navigation demand that these forests should be preserved; and for posterity should be set aside, this Adirondack region, as a park for New York, as is the Yosemite for California and the Pacific States."

forest needed to provide water for the state's rivers and canals--the water level in the Erie canal was declining
in 1885 land was set aside for a forest preserve: 681,000 acres
a forest preserve is like a national forest--purpose is wise use of timber
in 1892 an even larger area of land (2.8 million acres) was made a state park for recreation as well as preserving timber resources
people were concerned that trees were still being cut in the park and when New York state rewrote its state constitution in 1894 a provision was added that said: "The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed."

these various ideas of preservation tended to become a nostalgia for wilderness and enthusiasm for rustic vacation homes.
mass produced log cabin kits!

important paragraph at the bottom of page 84 begins: "Thus the foundation narrative of the axe and the log cabin invented in the late eighteenth century passed through a distinct series of stages":

late 18th century: frontiersmen prepared the land for settled farmers
early 19th century: the log cabin as noble origin: one family built a farm in the wilderness
mid to late 19th century: counternarrative--destruction of the wilderness
end of the 19th century: the log cabin and the forest as an escape from civilization and nostalgia for a simpler life
early to mid 20th century: scientific forestry, trees as a crop
starting in the 1960s: counternarrative--radical environmentalism, trees have rights

native American's had a very different notion of the forest than the European focus on property and exploitation--they saw it as a living thing